I love spring in the Ice Age.
Oh, the colors, the changing of seasons!
Yeah, I hardly recognize the place.
Of course, spring doesn't really start until the eggs hatch. And...
And you can't start Easter without our Easter feast.
That's right, with the family all together.
Which sounds amazing! But I made plans with my friends.
Someday you're gonna have a family of your own,
and then you'll know the importance of getting everyone together on the holidays.
I don't even know if I want that.
Manny, come out here! Your daughter is talking nonsense!
Honey! I'm in my Manny cave watching the Hawks-Bears game.
I'll help when I get back.
Promise.
- Come on, Hawks! - This is it, folks, it's sudden death.
- Guys, every time? - They're in formation and here they go!
Bears rule!
- Hawks on the attack! - Here comes Fuzzy Wuzzy. He...
- Holy mastodon! - That was sudden!
Game over. Hawks lose.
Why don't you guys go help your sister with the Easter feast?
Easter, schmeaster, chicken keister! Possums are launching our own holiday.
April possum day! A celebration of all things prank and possum.
If it's about you guys, why not call it April fools'?
- I like it. - Now, who will be the first fool?
- Peaches! - Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Manny! I could use another trunk up here!
Let's go watch the Falcons-Hornets game at your den.
Yeah, but Shira's sleeping. She went out all night hunting with the girls.
The Cougars? Fine, we'll watch at Sid's. Bring the nose plugs.
Guys, I'm touched you want to watch the game with me, but...
I can't because, you see, it's my grand opening!
Nothing about you is grand, Sid.
Well, if you recall, I once ran a kid's camp,
- El campo del Sid. - Disaster.
And then I nurtured three beautiful dinosaur eggs.
- Disaster. - And then I thought,
who has time to sit on their egg all day?
Me! So, I'm opening a pre-hatched pre-school.
Egg sitting. I sit on your egg.
Future disaster.
And not one single parent has entrusted their egg to you yet.
No, can you believe that? And I asked everyone, too.
Asher, stop sniffing him. It's embarrassing!
Except her!
Please, give me strength.
Don't eat that, it's already digested.
Excuse me, ma'am? I can't help noticing that you just migrated...
- Savannah! - ...so you know nothing about me.
- Savan... Rachel! - It wasn't me!
The skinny one! Spit your brother out! Right now! What on earth are you saying?
I know it's hard to manage, what, with today's two-hunter families.
Only one hunter here. My mate flew the coop.
- That's great! - What?
I mean... I mean, I feel your pain.
So, let me ask you...
who'll watch your egg while you scavenge to feed your young mouth to mouths?
I'm basically your only option.
And really, think about it. What could possibly go wrong?
Yo, I been stuck down here for three months hangin' out.
I got my sea legs back. Time to set sail!
Come on, you just got home! Stay!
We got it made here. We sleep all day, we game all night.
Mom, like, she picks up all our droppings, dude.
- Can one of you take out the trash? - Mom! In a minute!
I'm busy! I love that woman.
Clint! This hole is your whole universe.
And that's cool. You're a late bloomer. Whatever. I am a pirate. I don't judge.
But there's a whole world out there to pillage and plunder.
You can sit here with your late bloomin', I'mma get to pillage and plunderin'.
Okay... well...
You know, every time you scheme something, you end up back here, at rock bottom.
Yeah, but this time's gonna be different. I'm gonna bounce.
Here we go! What?
It's them!
Watch out!
They sank my ship!
All because I tried to kidnap and... well, maybe dump 'em at sea.
Anti-pirate jerks.
- Payback time. - If you're going out, take your brother!
Mom! I'm not taking him!
Of course I have space for little Jessica!
My motto is...
"Long as you've got an egg, I've got a place to sit."
Next!
- Who referred you? - Ethel did.
She said you had the most trustworthy eye she's ever seen.
You see, my little egg is my whole life, my miracle.
Well, yeah! I should say so.
- So, how did you... - I adopted.
Sid's got a dozen eggs in his care. This is not gonna go over easy.
It's like the future of the ecosystem is in Sid's hands.
Worse. It's under Sid's butt.
Hey! You hose-faced, trunk-toothed beast!
- Remember me? - Peter Cottontail?
That is insulting to my species! I'm here for the new ship you owe me!
- What are you talking about? - Oh, let me refresh your memory.
Last time we met, you beat, outsmarted, and humiliated me.
So the way I see it, you owe me a new ship.
Beat it, bunny. I don't owe you bupkis.
- What is he doing? - I think... he's attacking you?
Attacking? Exfoliating, maybe.
Y'all haven't heard the last of me! I'll be back for my new ship!
Nap time!
Oh, my gosh, you're so cute!
Sleep, sleep.
You want back tickles? Oh, you have a big day tomorrow!
Now, how are you gonna come outta your shell if you don't rest?
Oh, I know! I know, I know.
I'll tell you the story my mom used to tell me all the time.
It puts me right to sleep.
Okay. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall..."
And the lucky bunny stole them all.
Oh, you're poached!
"And all the king's horses and all the king's..."
Oh, I like your sunny side. I'm gonna put you up!
Egg roll!
Tomorrow I'm gonna cash in my nest egg for a big ol' pirate ship to sail away in!
First pranking is a rite of passage for every possum.
Peaches gets to be the first April fool in history.
She's gonna be so happy.
Here she comes!
We're the best uncles ever!
But I...
I don't get it! We set a vicious booby trap for our niece.
We did everything right here! Maybe your glue's no good.
Told you my glue is good!
- Crash? - What's happening?
Eddie?
- Stop it! - You stop it!
- It's good glue. - Thank you.
It's incredible!
Where are our eggs?
I don't think he knows where the eggs are.
Well, maybe it's senior ditch day.
How is that even possible?
I mean, they are deceptively quick for oblongs.
You close your eyes for one second and they wobble off.
- You lost them? - I trusted you with my egg!
And I got them to trust you too!
Do you have any idea, as a single-parent dad...
the hoops they made me jump through to adopt?
It took me all day to lay my eggs!
Have you ever given birth to something that weighs half a ton?
No. Sadly, nature hasn't seen it fit
to bless me with that experience.
Well, you're about to find out how it feels.
Pull!
Go ahead. I deserve it.
Please release the sloth.
Look, look, we'll find your eggs and we'll get 'em back by morning.
Or you can draw and quarter him tomorrow.
I'm not saying they should.
- Can we tar and feather him? - No! It'll get all over my cave.
- What if we feed him to the reptile! - Get that horny toad!
Look, I appreciate your ideas, but Sid didn't take your eggs!
- Then who did? - Hey, look!
- We found something! - It's a ransom note.
Get me a ship by tomorrow or the eggs get scrambled.
The pirate took our eggs!
- You brought this trouble here. - Just give him a new ship!
We can't negotiate with a pirate. He'll just keep doing it.
Wait, wait!
- It's the pirate! Get him! - He's got our eggs!
Wait, wait, wait, no, I'm not him! That's my brother.
No, he hid this! In our rabbit hole.
It's a treasure map to the eggs.
You see, pirates, they like to hide things,
and draw maps to find them, like, later. I don't know.
I know what pirates do. Why did you bring this to us?
My family's made its hole in this valley for 13 generations.
That's almost four years!
For once, I gotta make things right. You know?
For my family. We gotta get those eggs back.
I napped, and they got egg-napped.
Manny, we have to help those families.
Sid, this is your chance to make things right.
Thanks, Ellie. You're wise beyond your size.
Okay, we got ourselves an egg hunt!
Let's search every tree hole, rabbit hole, watering hole, and ice hole
in this entire valley.
We'll find 'em. I promise.
- Hey, don't you want to follow the map? - Map, schmap.
We have a D.T.S. Diego tracking system.
My nose, and these instincts, can't miss.
They just did.
According to this map we don't need, there should be one right...
Here! Eggs marks the spot.
Painting and hiding eggs? It's insidious. Who would do such a thing?
This is like finding an ice cube in a glacier.
I found another one.
All right, a little more to the left. No, center.
Okay, to the right, to the right. Okay, no, no, no, no.
Okay, a little more to the left, a little south, a little south.
It's chocolate. Should weigh just about the same.
Who knew that chocolate tastes best in egg form?
Sid!
Yeah! We got 'em all!
Clint! Finally got off your cottontail just to bite me in the back.
Okay. Those traps are on a hare-trigger.
One goes off, they all go off!
Soon as she comes up, pow!
Genius! But why would she come here?
- Simple. I left her a note. - This note?
Shoot.
Looks like we might be here for a while!
My baby! My little miracle!
I am not your miracle. Could you just put me down?
We can't panic like this. We've gotta panic like this!
We're never gonna see our eggs again! We gotta build him that ship.
I know you're worried about your families. I've been there.
But my guys always come through.
Look! It's them!
They're back!
Thank you! Thank you, thank you!
Neither ice, nor more ice, nor dark of night...
would keep us from returning every last egg.
Except yours.
- My egg's missing? - But we found every egg on the map!
Oh, no. My poor little egg!
Never even got a chance to drive me crazy!
Oh, why? Why me?
You fools! Oh, you really think I'm gonna put all my eggs in one basket?
You have until sunrise to build me my ship
if you ever want to see your precious egg again!
Oh, no!
It's one hour to sunrise. We're not gonna make it.
We still got an hour. Our hour.
Hour hour? So that's two hours.
No, it's the hour that belongs to us!
Look, despite new evidence that suggests I should not work in child care,
when we work together, we can fix any mistake I make.
Sid's right. Look, we had a setback. Let's start over and get this done.
Count me in.
Dude, stop, all right? This is kind of getting out of hand.
I'm not giving up that egg, Clint, not without a ship.
What about our home? Our family?
What about us? Your own fluff and blood.
You gave up on loyalty the moment you gave up my map!
We're bunnies! Okay? We're soft, we're cute, we're cuddly.
We got button noses and fluffy tails,
hand-crafted by nature to make everybody go...
And you found a way to make the whole animal kingdom hate us in one day!
You need everyone to love you! Here's you.
"Oh, that's okay, I don't need to be tough and strong.
"I'll go hide in a hole." That's you. Here's me.
I win!
Well, fine.
Have it your way. They built you a ship.
They're doin'... they're buildin'... they're building it?
If you think I'm gonna tell you where that egg is, you're nuts.
The egg!
No!
I got it, I got it!
My nest egg!
- Head's up! - Come on!
Surprise!
Oh, please!
Got it!
Did you see that? I got it!
My egg!
- Sid! - Sneak attack!
Do-si-do!
Spring thaw!
The ice is melting!
- Give me that egg! - Sid!
Darn bunny tail!
You're the first April fool!
We did it!
- Mama. - Thank you!
Savannah! Come look at your little brother.
He's so cute!
Oh, my goodness, aren't you the most beautiful thing?
My miracle!
Mom! Look!
Come here.
Peaches? Are you crying?
You got me. Family's cool.
You might even get to be a grand-mammoth someday.
- Manny, come out here. - What? What's wrong?
Your daughter's finally starting to make sense.
Okay, I know you want to be with your friends.
And I know the eagles show is starting. Go watch with Diego.
- No way. - Yeah, Mom.
We're having Easter feast all together. As a family.
You know, it was kind of fun having an egg hunt.
Maybe we should paint eggs and hide 'em every year!
Hey, you know what? You're awesome with eggs.
Now, what do you think of this? The Easter... bunny!
You mean like a job? Would I have to wear a stiff suit?
No, your birthday suit is perfect.
Mom, I got a job!
What do bunnies have to do with Easter?
Or eggs. Or painting. I'm sorry, that could never catch on.
Oh, I'm gonna get business cards. I'm the Easter bunny!
Perfect!
The ship is terrible! Not seaworthy!
Bunny overboard!
Oh, no!
Hey, look, shooting stars.
Quick, quick, make a wish, make a wish. You gotta make a wish.
- My wish came true. - I'm okay!
Mine too.
I think I burned my marshmallows.
Three, two, one...
Goal!
Welcome aboard, mate.
- Hey, this cruise has entertainment. - Seriously? Sid, you're out of your mind.
They left without me.
Isn't there anyone who cares about Sid the sloth?
Get off my face.
You and me, we make a great team. What do you say we just head south together?
Great, yeah. Hey, jump up on my back and relax the whole way.
- Really? - No.
- I didn't get the name. - Manfred.
Manfred? Yuck. How about Manny the moody mammoth?
Or Manny the melancholy...
His daddy wiped out half our pack
and wears our skin to keep warm.
An eye for an eye. And, Diego...
bring me that baby alive.
Go! Go!
That's his herd right up the hill. We should return him.
Manny!
- Name's Diego, friend. - Manfred, and I'm not your friend.
If you're looking for the humans, you're wasting your time. They left this morning.
- They couldn't be far. - You don't know much about tracking, do you?
They headed north two hours ago.
You could have died, trying to save me.
That's what you do in a herd.
You look out for each other.
Come on, Diego, let's bring this mammoth down.
- What are you doing? - Leave the mammoth alone.
You have to leave me here.
If those humans get through the pass, you'll never catch them.
Come on, Sid, let's head south.
Diego? You're okay!
Nine lives, baby.
This is gonna be the best migration ever.
I'm telling you, I'll show you all my favorite watering holes.
Everything is melting.
The dam's gonna break. The entire valley's gonna flood.
Look around. You're in a bowl.
Bowl's gonna fill up. Ain't no way out.
- What are we gonna do? - Unless...
you can make it to the end of the valley.
There's a boat. It can save you.
Well, shave me down and call me a mole rat. You found another mammoth.
Where? Wait a minute. I thought mammoths were extinct.
- This guy giving you trouble, sis? - Sis?
That's right. These are my brothers.
I don't think her tree goes all the way to the top branch.
Hey, she should come with us.
Are you insane? No way.
Okay.
Manny wants me to ask you if you'd like to escape the flood with us.
No brakes. Gotta roll. Meet you at the other end.
So, you think she's the girl for me?
Yeah. She's tons of fun and you're no fun at all.
- We made it. - Yeah, we showed those scary vultures.
There's only one way to go. We go forward.
- We go back. - Forward.
Back. Come on.
Fine.
Manny. It's Ellie, she's trapped in a cave.
Ellie, I don't want us to be together because we have to.
I want us to be together because we want to.
And I wanna be with you, Ellie. What do you say?
Oh, Manny, I thought you were going...
You're possum enough for me.
The baby's coming! The baby's coming!
- Watch it! - I'm having a baby!
Manny?
I told you it was just a kick.
Sorry, folks! False alarm!
I'd like to present Egbert, Shelly and Yoko.
Sid, whatever you're doing, it's a bad idea.
- Momma! - I'm a mommy.
- Sid! - Sid!
Help!
Sid must be down there.
We've been living above an entire world,
and we didn't even know it.
The name's Buck. Short for Buckminster.
Long for "Buh."
- What are you doing here? - Our friend was taken by a dinosaur.
Well! He's dead. Welcome to my world.
Wait! Sloth down!
It's not so bad down here. Nice weather, friendly neighbors.
Hi, neighbor.
- Rudy. - Rudy?
Peaches!
Peaches?
Peaches! The baby! What, now?
This? Not good.
Stranger danger!
That's right! Come on!
This is the end of Sid the sloth!
- Help! - No, Sid! It's me!
- And me! - And me!
I think we're getting close.
She looks just like her mother. Thank goodness.
It's good to have you back, Sid.
Never thought I would say this, but I missed you, buddy.
All right, mammals, let's get you home.
That's right, sweetheart. Welcome to the Ice Age.
What was that?
I think we're almost there!
I'll bury you all and dance on your graves.
So frail.
And she can't wait to spend time with you, Sid.
Manny! No!
No matter how long it takes, I will find you!
That wall is going to keep moving and crush us.
We need to get to the land bridge. Any questions?
Yes?
When you drink water through your trunk, does it taste like boogers?
No. Well, sometimes. Let's move!
Am I hallucinating, or is that ice coming straight towards us?
Captain Gutt, here to help.
You know, that's a nice monkey.
Lights out, big fella.
Hey, buddy. Welcome to the party.
- Prepare the plank! - Prepare the plank!
Preparing the plank!
Ain't going to happen, captain.
Does anyone have floaties?
There! Land!
Everyone paddle. Paddle!
Guys, over here. Come on, it's a shortcut.
That is amazing.
Guys, we should get out of here.
- This is epic! - Go! Go! Go!
Hey, Peach, loosen up! Have some fun.
Fun? I'm out of here.
If you geniuses are normal, this species is going to end up extinct.
Yeah, well, your species is going to be extinct first.
- Burn! - We're the same species, genius.
What? Double burn.
- Is that...? - Peaches? There she is!
Dad!
- Go, go, I'm right behind you. - No!
I'm right behind you.
Dad!
No!
There's nowhere to run, Manny.
Sometimes, it pays to weigh eleven tons!
No!
Bon voyage, monkey boy!
Did somebody hail a whale?
How's that for an entrance?
During moviemaking sometimes you find characters that really stand out
and become this happy surprise in the story,
and Scrat was one of them.
Scrat was one of the characters that we developed for Ice Age 1.
And it came from a need to find an opening sequence for the movie.
We went through Peter's drawings, and there it was.
We added the saber-teeth and we gave him an acorn, and this whole issue was born.
And that's when the idea of that glacier sequence became the opening of the movie.
Very simple storyline, no dialogue.
Just having this little character just...
run for his life with one thing in mind, the nut. People just loved it.
Everybody who saw this sequence just could so identify with this poor little guy,
that he just got a life of his own,
and we just ended up using him throughout all three movies.
Scrat sequences are a dream, in a way, because it is pure animation,
just to have fun and do slapstick and not be tied down by dialogue.
But after three movies, it does get challenging because...
"So, okay, what have we not done with this guy?"
The most important thing in Scrat's universe is his acorn.
That's all he cares about.
And writers came up with something brilliant
by coming up with the one thing that could possibly compete with that,
and that's Scratte.
Scratte is the perfect foil because...
she's beautiful, she's cunning, she's everything that he isn't.
When I was designing Scratte, I knew she had to be the opposite of Scrat.
So she had to be beautiful. She had to be smart.
All the things that he's not.
Scrat is this nervous, twitchy character,
not particularly well-groomed.
She's elegant and smooth.
We just wanted her to look as beautiful as she could be,
because Scrat has to look at her and just fall in love immediately.
So we gave her long eyelashes with a little bit of blue,
so we just make her really feminine and funny.
Scratte did start out being a lot more instinctual,
and then we started seeing her look,
playing against Scrat actually worked a lot better.
And that's where it started to mold her personality.
Her movement is really different because she's very straight with her poses.
Scrat will pop and just jerk into the motion.
She'll do a swirl.
The uglier and the more disheveled and pathetic you get Scrat, the funnier he is.
But you always have to make sure she's looking as good as possible,
and that's where the comedy is, the contrast between the two.
And we kind of thought, what if both Scrat and Scratte
have the same goal, the nut.
Like, we can create this great fun little kind of spy vs spy kind of thing
that they keep trying to outsmart each other to catch the nut.
And then, therefore by doing that, they find love.
Then, the concept came up, the love triangle, Scrat, nut and girl, Scratte.
The Scrat sequences in general are not scripted.
They are all invented in story and with the director.
Carlos definitely had the idea of the Scrat arc, meeting the girl
and a basic idea of what would happen.
But as far as every individual sequence, they leave it to us.
The first thing we do is a first rough pass.
Rough, dirty awful looking drawings, and then you pitch them in front of the whole room.
You act it out. You do voices. You're really trying to get the room to laugh.
And then falls like a rock.
The Scrat tango sequence, that was my assignment. And I thought, "Well...
okay. They need to be fighting over the nut. "It's gotta be fun and funny and..."
So, then, the next part was me just trying to sketch out the choreography,
seeing how it would work with their tails, and bringing squirrelness into a human dance.
Just weeks of just doing gags.
And then Carlos basically just picks his favorite, and the tango was born.
The tango sequence took 33 days, about five weeks,
because there was a lot of play between who is holding the nut,
where it's going, so it takes a great deal of Polish time.
We looked up on YouTube how to dance tango,
and I think one of the coolest responses was when the storyboard artists noticed
I did a backwards ocho in one of the shots I did.
So, actually, I have very specific tango moves in this.
It's all a collaborative effort that made that sequence extremely painful
but extremely rewarding at the same time.
It's one of my favorite sequences in the movie.
It just shows how fun and painful love can be.
One thing about the original Scrat was thinking,
"what's gonna be the voice for Scrat?" So, we just put temporary voices just to see.
We needed some sounds.
So, I connected with my inner Scrat,
and the noises just came voluntarily.
Mostly, it's effort sounds.
Scrat, you know, gets surprised by something, it's kind of...
He's getting bopped on the head, it's kind of the same sound, only just...
Things like that.
It matched so perfectly. We said, "why look elsewhere? We got the talent right here."
And Chris became the signature voice of Scrat and was wonderful.
And then when we defined the Scrat girl, I decided, "let's look inside again.
"Let's go through the same process."
And Karen Disher, she'd been doing a lot of voice temps for us.
I've been doing scratch voices since I started out.
So, I think when they needed a temp voice for Scratte
at the beginning of production, they were like, "we'll just bring Karen in,"
which is, for me, a lot of fun,
when you can come into the booth and they're like, "okay, you're falling down a cliff."
You know, "you're being punched in the stomach."
You know, it's a funny and weird thing.
In terms of vocalizing, it's tricky because Scrat's so great.
Chris Wedge does such an amazing voice.
So, how do I keep this animal in the same family, but different at the same time?
So, for me, that was thinking of little sexy things like, little purrs she could do,
little come-hither squeaks, which is difficult to do.
There's big, furry paws to fill in a lot of ways.
Pretty clever. I don't know where she gets it.
I just don't.
I was not expecting to end up being the voice in a movie at all.
And then John came to me about a year and a half ago now and said,
"guess what? You're gonna be Scratte."
And I was just, like, "shut up." Like, I couldn't even believe it, so...
It was really exciting.
The final ending where you kind of, you keep the question,
"is he gonna be with the girl? Or is he gonna get the nut?
"Or he's gonna get nothing?" And we had, like, three different ways of ending the movie.
And we chose one that we thought was the best for Scrat.
The nut always comes first for Scrat.
Always, always, always. He can't win at the end, never.
And that's the cardinal rule 'cause that's the Scrat.
We kind of leave Scrat where we pick him up in the beginning.
He's always gonna have a certain amount of struggle in his life
no matter what happens.